Dryth's Soul Space was just as he'd left it, with the strange furniture, the books he didn't recognize, and the daunting window and door. His desk was still there with the "MP" measuring device on it, completely full since he hadn't pure cast anything today and he didn't have any cards to draw on in his deck yet. There were two things that had changed that he only noticed as he look around. One was the box sitting on the desk where his Soul Card had been. It was only a few inches tall and thin, with just enough space to fit a small number of cards in it. Sitting in a little window in the front of it was his Soul Card. Underneath his Soul Card was some small lettering that spelled out "Deck Limit: 0/10".

  He reached down and picked it up. "Is this my deck?" The drawn version of him on his Soul Card smiled back at him but didn't otherwise respond. Seeing the images on cards move wasn't that peculiar, back before he'd been the strange child his parents and his oldest sibling had shown him a few of their green cards, but having the picture looking back be him was strange. Looking closer, the window that his Soul Card sat in was also a flap. He pulled it open and looked inside the box to find ten thin slots that looked like they could each hold a card, with one additional slot set near the front with tabs that were slightly darker in color. That obviously held Form Magical Contract.

  He absentmindedly lifted his hand with the new card Ewan had given him to put it in one of the slots, which was when he noticed the second change in his soul space since his last visit. There was something coming out of Dryth's chest, a shimmering string that came from where his heart was and stretched outward away from. He jumped back away form it out of surprise, but it just came with him wherever he moved. After a few moments of flailing and jumping around he managed to calm himself down.

  "What...?" He reached out and poked it, causing it to vibrate softly. It was very thin and seemed to be composed of three smaller strings, one that was white, one gold, and one silver. Something about the colors poked at his brain, and the way the string shimmered and flexed was oddly comforting. "Sindri?"

  "Dryth?"

  Dryth's head snapped up as he hurriedly look around. "Sindri? Are you here?"

  "Where is 'here'? Because I'm in my soul space."

  "I'm in my soul space."

  "Then no, I'm not there. We can still talk to each other while we're in our soul spaces though, that's nice."

  "Do you have a string coming out of you that stretches out into..." He traced the length of the thread, following it until it hit the covered window and just kept going somehow, leading out into nothing that Dryth could see but somehow he knew it was still there in the distance. "... Nothing?"

  "I don't have a string, but there's a line of heat doing something like that that seems to be coming from my heart."

  "A line of heat?"

  "Yeah, I can see heat remember? It's kind of odd, heat normally isn't this still. Or uniform."

  "Oh right. So both of our soul spaces have some kind of representation of our contract? That's interesting, I wonder if Ewan has something like this when he's contracted."

  "That's not our contract, that's the consequence of our contract. Thats our soulbond, Dryth."

  "Oh shit. Wait, how'd you figure that out so fast?"

  "In my soul space I can pull on all the collective knowledge of my ancestors, including what soulbonds look like."

  "Wait, what?"

  "Ha, you fell for it. No I'm totally kidding I just guessed since we're in our soul spaces that the new thing that looks like it's binding us together is out soulbond."

  "Alright smartass."

  Sindri laughed happily. "Have you looked at the card Ewan gave us yet?"

  "No, I got distracted."

  "Well hurry up, I want to shoot at things!"

  Dryth put the deck box down and looked at the card in his other hand. The picture on it was of a dart-shaped bundle of light with little fragments flaking off of it as it flew through the air. It looked like someone had thrown a shining bunch of glitter at something more than anything else.

  For the first card that Dryth received outside of the one he automatically got with his Class, it was... lackluster. It shot out a dart that was made of magical glitter that barely hurt anything and might have a chance to disorient an enemy in some way if he got lucky. It was basically "baby's first attack spell, light magic version".

  Dryth stopped to consider that. Ewan had just said that he wanted Dryth to get cards on his own without being handed them, and he probably had a good reason for that. Additionally, every fight Dryth had ever been in involved one of his siblings or non-sibling bullies hitting him a lot while he tried to keep them from hitting something important or his crotch. "Baby's first attack spell" was actually a really good starting point if you looked at his combat experience.

  He used a thumb to flip open the flap of his deck box and slipped Sparkle Dart into the first open slot. It landed in place with a small clicking noise and somehow he knew that if he pressed down on the card it would pop upward out of the slot, thus freeing it up for other cards. When he closed the flap again the numbers near the bottom changed from "0/10" to "1/10". The artistically rendered picture of himself on his Soul Card set down the quill he was holding and held his palm upward. A white, gold, and silver bundle of magic appeared in his hand and shaped itself into a dart. His image inspected it for a moment before smiling and nodding up at the real him and let the dart fade away.

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  "That's very strange and I'm not sure if it should me making me uncomfortable or not."

  His image didn't respond, it just smiled and picked up it's quill again.

  "... I guess I'll decide how I feel about that later." Dryth set down his deck box and willed himself back outside of his soul, which was much less jerky without an older and more powerful mage yanking him out against his will.

  Dryth opened his eyes to find Ewan still in the exact same position as when he'd closed his eyes.

  "Ah, you're back. Put the card in your deck?"

  "I did. How long was I gone?"

  "Just a few seconds. Time in your soul space is much, much faster than reality."

  Sindri started wiggling in his spot around Dryth's neck. "Huh? How'd you get back before me? You hadn't even read the card yet?"

  "You two can talk to each other in your soul spaces?" Ewan asked quickly, looking very interested.

  "Yes, we could it was the same as when we telepath to each other in reality."

  "No it wasn't, you were talking out loud, I was using telepathy."

  "You could hear him when he was talking out loud and you could answer back with your telepathy?" Ewan's hand came up to scratch at his stubble. "That's fascinating."

  "We could also see a representation of our soulbond while we were in there! Mine looks like a line of heat leading off into the distance, and Dryth's was a string!"

  "It was made up of smaller threads that were the same main colors as Sindri." Dryth volunteered.

  "Mine was the same temperature Dryth is when he's resting!"

  Ewan raised his other hand and made a grasping motion at the pair. "I know so many researchers that would love to sit the two of you down and ask so many questions, myself included. But, learning first, while you are my students I am a teacher first and foremost!" He declared. "What do you think of the card I gave you two?"

  "It's pretty!"

  Dryth's answer was less exuberant, but it wasn't negative. "It seems like a beginner's card for learning combat magic."

  "Spot on, that's exactly what it is." He waved his hand at the firing lanes. "Let's go over basic safety instructions and then we'll let the two of you try it out."

  The basic safety instructions were all various version of "shoot in that direction and not anywhere else or other people", so it didn't take long to cover. After that Sindri and Dryth each grabbed a spot and got ready to use their first offensive cards ever. Dryth drew his with a flick of his wrist, already having practiced it with Form Magical Contract to wean himself off of the "traditional" way to draw the Association taught. He held the card between his thumb and curled index finger, with the face pointed at the target. It wasn't necessary to use a card by saying it's name, but there was something to doing it that way, at least the first time. "Sparkle Dart."

  A swirling dart of silver, gold, shining blue, and gleaming platinum formed in front of the card and launched itself at the target. It was a slightly different color than the image of it that had appeared on Dryth's Soul Card for a moment, it was closer in color to what he called his prismatic text than to Sindri's coloration, which the art on the Soul Card had been. The dart shot forward at around the same speed Dryth had once seen an arrow shot at a festival display and hit the target. It burst into scintillating specks like a magical firework, leaving a tiny burn mark on the target where it hit, which quickly vanished.

  "Cool!" Sindri cheered. "My turn!" He'd apparently decided to wait so they both could watch each other cast. "Sparkle Dart!" Sindri's dart wasn't multi-colored at all, it was a gleaming pinprick of sunlight that almost hurt to look at that moved at a noticeably higher speed than Dryth's. It hit the target harder, it burst into a larger display, and the pieces of the dart that flashed as it erupted looked like buts of the sun being reflected by a mirror, much more distracting than Dryth's colorful flecks.

  "Damn Sindri, how'd you do that?" Dryth demanded, staring at the larger burn mark in the target that was taking longer to heal.

  "It's my Soul Card! It gives me increased power with all forms of light magic!"

  "Oh. You never told me that."

  "I didn't? Shit, sorry, I totally forgot!" He dipped his head apologetically. "I thought I shared it with you earlier." He glanced over at Ewan for a second. "Can I tell you about it later, though?"

  Dryth concentrated on sending back to Sindri on the "channel" they hoped was a private one. "You don't want Ewan to know?"

  "Uh..."

  "Don't worry you two, I'm not going to listen in to obviously private talks, but if you want to wait till I'm not around that's perfectly fine. Also, I heard the first bit since you weren't trying to hide it, and Sindri is absolutely right to be cautious about it." Ewan said evenly, "Unlike the Races of Man and other beings that have Soul Cards with similar affects to our Classes, a vast majority of sapient species have Soul Cards that are..." He winced, "Somewhat similar to those of monsters? That is to say, it affects them much more than ours do. Human Soul Cards that give Classes grant us additional abilities while simultaneously increasing and limiting what we can do with cards. The Soul Cards of coatl and other such beings... define them, for lack of a better word. A human is a human just like every other human, the noticeable differences are cosmetic at most. A dragon could be an ocean dragon, or a sky dragon, or a fire dragon, or anything else in between. They have much more outsized effects on every part of that dragon's, or coatl's, life. Sindri is obviously a light coatl, but that doesn't tell me his strengths, besides the incredibly obvious one of having stronger light magic, or his weaknesses. Both of which the two of you should keep secret so that no enemy has a chance to learn it." He rapped his own skull with a knuckle. "They can't pull it out of my brain if it was never in my brain to begin with!"

  Sindri shrugged his wings. "What he said. You humans are weird to me, but for the rest of us sharing your Soul Card is a big deal. I've met people who have had kids and grandkids that never shared every detail of it."

  "Why would you show me then?" Dryth asked silently.

  "Because you die if I die." Sindri replied with heaps of "duh" included. "We can reap all the benefits of being able to share and plan around all of our joint information without worrying about being betrayed or falling out because neither of us is completely insane."

  "... Sometimes I feel like you're the impulsive one who's going to jump into any mildly interesting moment face first, and sometimes I think you're wiser than I am."

  "Those aren't mutually exclusive! You're just denying the wisdom of impulsivity!"

  "Alright, alright the banter is adorable you're very good friends, whatever." Ewan complained. "I'm doing teacher things now. Dryth! That was bad. I expected it, so no worries, but you can't improve what you don't know is a problem. Why were you holding it like that? You obviously showed off where you were aiming, and you even held the card face out and gave a potential enemy a chance to see what card you were using. It's only a split second, but still. Take a page from Sindri and draw you card away from yourself. It's a magical construct of your soul, it can be facing in any direction and you can do it a tiny distance from your skin so that you're not limited by your fingers. Try again."

  "Sindri, you did fine with the location, having it float just above your head is a nice dramatic touch, but you did the same thing with letting the face of the card point outward! Have it point at an angle down toward your head, that'll stop anyone from seeing it. And why did you fire with your mouth open like that? It's a spell card, not a breath weapon card! I don't care if you're scaly and have wings, you aren't a dragon! It completely gives away the timing of your attack. Do it again!"

  For someone who claimed not to be a combat instructor, Ewan was quite harsh on every little minute detail of error he could find with their technique. He spent hours lecturing them on philosophy of combat, actual techniques, how to draw their cards in out of the way places to hide that they were drawing at all, how to stagger their draw and use of a card for a brief second, and even more beyond those. By the end of the lesson both Dryth and Sindri were mentally exhausted and hadn't mastered a single thing they'd been taught. They could barely remember most of it.

  "Don't worry." Ewan said to his two tired students when they were wrapping up the lesson. "I don't expect you to be perfect at this already. We'll be repeating all of this and practicing regularly until you get it down, and I still expect you to keep practicing after that!"